No, this isn't the end of the NASCAR driving road for Jimmie Johnson

No, this is not the end of the road behind the wheel for Jimmie Johnson in the NASCAR Cup Series, even if making his 700th start in the Coca-Cola 600 seemed like every bit of a fitting place close the figurative book.

Certainly, Johnson almost seemed to suggest it with a social media posting earlier in the week that almost made it seem like this race him closing the chapter between full-time racer and full-time owner.  

Been a long road. Wouldn’t change a mile. pic.twitter.com/3HwHoZWUY5

So this isn't it?

"No," Johnson said with a laugh on Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. "That’s hilarious. That was just great editing. Proud of our digital department. They did a great job."

He laughed some more to hammer the point home.

To be fair, Johnson only had two races scheduled this season, the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600 with a majority of his professional efforts going towards building the Legacy Motor Club team he serves as majority owner of. It's been a work in progress the past year and a half, with both Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek struggled to find sustained performance.

As a result, there has been tremendous turnover in the competition department, even with an influx of private equity resources from Knighthead Capital Management, which joined last year as minority owners. Legacy has a Tier One relationship with Toyota Racing but is also choosing to go at it independently from Joe Gibbs Racing.

There is a method behind that independence.

“Our desire to be our own independent team is quite high,” Johnson said. “It started with Maury (Gallagher, former team co-owner) and it’s where we need to be as an organization. Not only to be competitive here, but if we choose to expand in other forms of motorsports, the infrastructure – we need to be an independent, stand-alone team.

“We certainly took a look at the JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) alliance at one point, it did make a lot of sense for us then but it is always an ever changing landscape – I don’t want to rule out and say there can’t be a relationship at some point in the future, but one of our core values has been being independent on our own, and that is what has attracted Toyota and has helped build this relationship.

“It is not an easy road to hoe, but for them, it does make sense to have another organization at someday will be independent and operating at the highest of levels. It is hard to be concise with it, but it has been one of our core values and we’ve been trying to see that through. It started with Maury, and with the added resources from Knighthead Capital and the long term and runway that we are so aligned with Tom Wagner, it just helps us to plan for the future and make incremental steps in that direction, and spend in the right direction, knowing we have a long runway to achieve that.”

But again, the successes have been far and few between with a lot of turnover in every department from competition to marketing. This is under the stewardship of a racer who had immediate success at the highest level and seldom needed to wait for it.

So how is he learning to be patient with this endeavor?

“Therapy.”

He said it hasn’t been easy.

“Being patient is not in my DNA, and it has been part of my journey as an owner to understand how patient you truly need to be,” Johnson said. “It’s not so much for decisions to be made, but for those decisions to be made is one aspect and then you have to paper it. That takes a while, and then you have to implement, and then work through and ideate.

“It is a process, and I’m fortunately surrounded by a lot of experience that has helped me. We are moving at a good rate, especially for the decisions we’ve made. Last year, I don’t think Toyota or ourselves expected it to be that difficult. We made a lot of changes at the midpoint of last year, and have slowly been gaining momentum and moving in the right direction.”

As far as his part-time schedule, Johnson says he still may run another race yet and that he enjoys it from the standpoint of working with development crew members and pit crews but also contributing to the development of their cars.

“Last year, I ran nine – it was a little too much on the organization,” Johnson said. “This year, I’m at two – maybe we do a few more, so as we plan for next year, as long as it doesn’t take away from our full-time cars, we hope to run an unchartered vehicle and have me in it, and use that to develop talent, and also help develop partnerships and such. It is part of our plan. We don’t have ’26 picked yet, but rest assured, there is more than 700 starts. I’m jumping up and down asking for more races than two.”